Credits: kayitea,
vivienka,
The realm of fanfiction is an interesting place. Where canon may be scant with details, fans of a work can take up the task of filling in perceived holes in a story. This may include creating their own characters to flesh out a character's lineage or coming up with reasons why certain ones behave as they do. After all, what if the story never bothers to tell us who the parents of the protagonist were? Or the deal behind that guy with the cool name who's always mentioned but never shown? If one of these fan works becomes popular enough, it will spread across the community and its ideas become an accepted fact of the show/book/movie's lore. Or mocked, if the fic is lacking in quality. Either way, these questions raised by the canonical work which the fans latched onto haven't been answered and never will be, so fans are free to continue playing with them... right?
But what's this? The creators have revealed the official version, and it's nothing like what the fans imagined.
Outdated by Canon is when fan works (and the theories backing them) are Jossed by revelations or events in the canonical product; most often in regard to characterization. For example, a fanfic writer might decide that Bob's unseen mother is a Retired Badass who instilled and promoted Bob's own thirst for adventure. This fanfic becomes popular and soon the entire fandom chooses this as their fanon, with other fanfics following suit. Various stories are made about Bob's mom teaching him how to fight, or giving him hero advice, or even coming out of retirement to help Bob and his friends stop the Big Bad. Then several installments later, when the creators of the canonical work finally take us to Bob's childhood home to meet his mom, it turns out she's an Improperly Paranoid woman who's terrified of even leaving her house. This leaves future fans who find these old fics wondering why the story they just stumbled upon has Bob's mom threatening to punch out an eldritch abomination instead of fainting at the sight of one.
The earlier the fanwork was made in the life of the work that inspired it, the more likely it will be hit by this trope: after all, the beginning of a work is when the audience has the least understanding of the world they've been presented with, increasing the chance of early theories being jossed. However, any fanwork can be affected unless it's based on a work that has definitively concluded, meaning there will be no further official installments to contradict what fans have created, or it's an Alternate Universe Fic and wasn't meant to be canon-compliant in the first place.
Also a specific form of Canon Foreigner, O.C. Stand-in, and potentially Hilarious in Hindsight. Some fans may invoke Fanon Discontinuity, especially if one specific character interpretation was popular with the community because that version was well-written or served as great eye-candy. If this involves removing any possibility of a popular pairing becoming canon, a Fan-Preferred Couple may result. Often the result of an Unknown Character finally getting revealed.
This is only a trope applicable to fan works, as any licensed examples fall into the Canon Discontinuity, Canon Marches On, Early Adaptation Weirdness or What If? scenarios. Part of Time Marches On. See also Resolved Noodle Incident. Contrast Ascended Fanon or I Knew It!, where the popular fanfic interpretation ends up being part of canon either because of its popularity with fans or because that was always the plan.
Examples Are Not General: This page only covers specific fan works (of any type of medium), not general fanon that aged badly.
Spoilers for the source material may be unmarked, as examples need to explain how the fan works are outdated. Read at your own risk.
Examples: (Sorted by source material)
- In the Beastars fanfic Protector, Pina is shown to have some degree of PTSD for being kidnapped at the end of the Murder Incident Solution Arc. Chapter 182, released much after the fic was underway, reveals that Pina feels nothing of the sort, and has actually befriended his former kidnapper while he was in juvie.
- Bleach, being a Long Runner, has a lot of fanworks written before various later arcs that wound up contradicted.
- Hogyoku ex Machina was written before a lot of major reveals happened and it shows; Kenpachi's zanpakuto is an Original Character (the TYBW arc would reveal its canon name and form; Kenpachi's lieutenant Yachiru, real name Nozarashi), Yamamoto's bankai is a dragon made of lava (he would enter Bankai for the first time in TYBW and reveal that it's more The Power of the Sun), Ukitake's illness is speculated to be mundane tuberculosis (it's not and this is plot-relevant in TYBW), Zangetsu and the Inner Hollow behave in ways that contradict later character revelations ( namely, that the Inner Hollow is actually Zangetsu and the Old Man is Ichigo's inner Quincy; the fic's Inner Hollow denies being Ichigo's sword), and Ichigo speculates that Aizen was lying about having orchestrated his life to throw him off guard (Everything But the Rain confirms that Aizen was telling the truth for the most part; while he didn't plan for Ichigo's parents being a Shinigami and a Quincy, the reason he's part Hollow and why his dad settled down in the living world is because of one of Aizen's Hollow experiments that got out of control and infected his mom's soul.)
- Please Stop Eating the Hell Butterflies: Uryu Ishida ends up partially hollowified due to a cookie-related incident. Canon would later confirm that hollow reiatsu is toxic to Quincies, as when Masaki is infected by a hollow, she nearly dies and is only saved by Urahara's intervention sealing it away, so Uryu couldn't have become a Visored.
- A Certain Scientific Railgun: When Misaki Shokuhou was finally introduced after being hinted at, the fanfic Minds, Memories, and Misfortune explored her encountering A Certain Magical Index protagonist Touma Kamijou because she learns that he's been in the company of her rival, Railgun protagonist Mikoto Misaka, and wanted to learn more about him. However later issues of the manga would reveal Misaki was already familiar with Touma and his abilities, and the Index novels would reveal that she met Touma a year before Mikoto ever did, and that Touma's present association with Mikoto was part of the reason why Misaki views Mikoto as a rival.
- Chainsaw Man:
- too young once
depicts Nayuta being just as quiet and reserved as she was in Chapter 97, since at the time of the fic’s writing that was the most fans had to go on regarding her characterization. Her reintroduction in Chapter 120 would show that she’s become just as rambunctious as her big brother Denji.
- One Reddit user had made a Fire Devil concept
, giving it a skeletal design and saying that it forms contracts where it gives out sparklers to people in exchange for their personal belongings (with the strength of the sparklers depending on how irreplaceable said belonging was). Chapter 146 would later reveal that the "Justice Devil" that had been granting contracts free of charge was in fact the Fire Devil, thereby establishing the transformation power its contracts grant to be more metaphorical than literal in its relation to fire (with Chapter 205 clarifying that the forms correspond to “the shape of [the contractee's] justice”). Chapter 204 would then reveal the canonical Fire Devil’s design, showing it to have a feminine appearance and a campfire-like head.
- Baby-Faced Death
shows that Asa's father was a victim of Arnolone Syndrome, which the fic depicts as a disease that reverses aging, and that Asa's mother had him euthanized once his condition progressed far enough. Pochita later eating the Arnolone Syndrome Devil and subsequently erasing the disease from existence resulted in Asa forgetting the exact details about her father's death up until Denji barfed out the devil in Aging's World. Chapter 217, which was released 10 months after the fic was published, revealed that Asa's mother killed him after he lost a leg in a Devil attack to ensure she got enough money from their insurance to allow Asa to attend high school. Asa herself was also partly complicit in the act, deliberately tripping while running to get help so that he would potentially bleed to death, though she had repressed the memory for years.
- too young once
- Code Geass: In Of Monsters and Men, Nunnally is blind and keeps her Eyes Always Shut of her own free will. The anime later confirmed that she's only blind because her eyes can't open. Her vision itself is fine.
- Dragon Ball:
- The concept of another android was quite popular with some fanworks, in particular, Android 21. In Bringer of Death, Android 21
is an energy-absorbing android Doctor Gero created just in case due to the story events, described as a giant man with it pronouns. Dragon Ball FighterZ would introduce Android 21, a female bio-android made with the cells of every character lacking the energy absorption powers, including the Eldritch Abomination Majin Buu. As such, she is a scientist that can shapeshift in a Cute Monster Girl form with a love for sweets, and is directly based on the mother of Doctor Gero's son, being a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds.
- Dragon Ball Zero (Toyble): Alongside taking elements of the movies and The Father of Goku (with various works like Dragon Ball Minus (released as a part of Jaco the Galactic Patrolman) rendering it in canon limbo), this doujinshi presents Raditz meeting Vegeta and Nappa after the destruction of Planet Vegeta and the death of his squad. Further material like Dragon Ball Super: Broly would show Raditz was a member of Vegeta's squad from day one, and they survived because Vegeta ignored Frieza's order. Nappa and Vegeta's reaction to Planet Vegeta's destruction likewise is outdated. In the doujinshi, they laughed about it very sadistically after hearing about it. In Broly? Nappa is visibly horrified while Vegeta is more indifferent about not being able to become the new king.
- Various Dragon Ball video games gave What If? Super Saiyan forms to various Saiyan characters, most notably Vegeta obtaining the Super Saiyan 3 transformation, something that would appear in games like Dragon Ball Z: Dragon Battlers, Dragon Ball: Raging Blast or Dragon Ball Heroes, but not a form he would achieve in canon, including Dragon Ball Z or Dragon Ball Super. These games would give Vegeta a look similar to how Goku and Gotenks looked when they reached the form, having golden Barbarian Longhair that reaches past his shoulders. Dragon Ball DAIMA shows what Vegeta looks like with this form, pulling out Super Saiyan 3 when he fights Tamagami Number Two. However, contrary to the video games, DAIMA gives him a different tailored hairstyle where his hair grows longer, but doesn't fall behind his shoulders, rather than the same one Goku and Gotenks gain.
- The concept of another android was quite popular with some fanworks, in particular, Android 21. In Bringer of Death, Android 21
- Fullmetal Alchemist
- The 2004 fangame, Fullmetal Alchemist: Bluebird's Illusion, has Ed and Al's father Hohenheim as the leader of the Homunculi. This was before it was revealed that Hohenheim and Father were two separate people. This game also has Edward become Pride, since this was made long before it was revealed that Selim Bradley was Pride.
- Girls und Panzer
- In Strange Waters,
:
- The fic, which was written before the last two episodes of the anime airedExplanation, has the final match end differently, with Kuromorimine's flag tank being taken down after being exposed, instead of Miho defeating Maho in a tank duel. The fic also portrays Oarai's tank crews, apart from Anglerfish, as being significantly less competent than they became by the end of the anime.
- In the fic's version of said final match, we see Duck Team's Type 89 get completely destroyed by Kuromorimine's arsenal in the final match, necessitating a replacement for the now tankless team. While the actual battle did feature the tank be taken down by KMM, the Type 89 was still repairable (much like the rest of the Oarai tanks) and was able to soldier on in subsequent entries.
- Boys und Sensha-dō!
- The fic seems to imply that the high school tankers' only way to continue tankery after high school is to enter the Self-Defense force and study under Shiho. Naturally, the film's showing university-level tankery teams and other tankery houses show that the Nishizumi school isn't the only choice.
- There's also Miho's decision to demote Momo from deputy commander after her poor performance against Dalian while filling in for Miho during the latter's recovery. While reasonable, the decision eventually ends up being at odds with how in Das Finale, Momo is made commander in an attempt to help her get into Yuzu and Anzu's university.
- The fic has Miho fondly reminisce about her time in her middle school tankery team. Phase Erika shows that her time at the school- the middle school division of Kuromorimine- was unpleasant, from feeling out of her depth in the tankery team to having to treat Maho as a commander first and a sister second.
- Always Advancing
- Nakajima's first name was retconned from Satoko to Rera prior to Das Finale 3 for unnamed reasons. As this fic was written around the time Das Finale 1 and 2 was coming out, Nakajima's first name is still Satoko in the story.
- None of the characters that make their first appearance in ''Das Finale'' is acknowledged in this story. Justifiable, as this is an Alternate Universe Fic where the timeline was reset before those characters interacted with the main characters, thus would not have been able to recognize them even if Amnesiac Resonance kicked in like many of the characters did.
- Speedster and Spymaster: An Unlikely Love Story
opens with Earl Grey, the former team commander of St. Gloriana, flying back to Japan from England where she was studying abroad after graduating STGGC. While spinoff mangas in this series are more often than not Loose Canon, this depiction is at odds with how Saga of Pravda sent her off by way of having her go into an arranged marriage just before the events of the main series started, thus never going to a university of any sort.
- In Strange Waters,
- Kaguya-sama: Love Is War: The aptly titled Ishigami-kun and Iino-san Are Dating doujinshi was written at a point when the idea of the two getting together was only just starting to be hinted at. As a result Iino's friend Osaragi mostly treats the relationship with indifference, when just the idea of the two getting together temporarily tore their friendship apart in the manga. The author even lampshades that this trope would probably be in effect in the foreword.
- Little Witch Academia: Fireworks
was written back when the franchise only consisted of the original short film and is one of the first fanfics ever made for the franchise, thus, it unsurprisingly contains several oddities, such as professors Ursula and Nelson being called Hidaka and Kaname respectively (as both were unnamed in the short film) and a different personality for Diana from canon, who is depicted in the fanfic as being far more silly and teasing towards Akko as opposed to the serious and aloof girl shown in the film's sequel, Little Witch Academia: The Enchanted Parade and the later TV series.
- My Hero Academia:
- The name of the missing eldest Todoroki sibling was widely speculated, especially after theories emerged that he became the villain Dabi. Karma in Retrograde ended up naming him Ryouta. The Pro Hero arc ended up settling on Toya.
- A common plot point in MHA fics is exploring Aizawa's teaching habits, namely his past history of expelling students on the first day for "lacking potential". However, fics like Sleeper Hit AU, Coyote and The Gatekeeper
were written before canon revealed that, while the expulsions remained on their student records, Aizawa immediately re-enrolled all of them, treating expulsion as a scare tactic more than anything else. The entire class that he expelled the prior year is revealed to still be attending UA as upperclassmen, and while some of them understandably don't like Aizawa for the ruse, others like Mawata Fuwa are appreciative of the act.
- In the DEATH BATTLE! episode "Zuko VS Shoto Todoroki", the way the show's hosts, Wiz and Boomstick, describe the circumstances of Shoto's birth implies that Endeavor viewed his wife Rei as nothing more than a Breeding Slave on whom he exercised a Marital Rape License. Although the purpose of their Arranged Marriage was indeed to produce a child powerful enough to surpass All Might, the idea that Rei was forced into having children against her will originated in fanon; later chapters of the manga would reveal that Endeavor and Rei did truly love each other for much of their relationship, that Rei herself wanted to have many children so they could support each other, and that Endeavor only became abusive after Shoto, the youngest Todoroki child, was born.
- Origin of a Non-Hero:
- Late in the fic, Izuku considers giving One For All to Shiki, who lied to him and claimed that Matsuyama was able to remove his Quirk. The fic was written before Izuku learned that giving One For All to someone who has a Quirk will shorten their lifespan, so while Shiki would have refused, the idea ends up creating some Fridge Horror.
- Bakugo's hero name is Ground Zero in this fic. In canon, it's revealed to be Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight late in the Paranormal Liberation War arc.
- The entire premise of this fic has essentially been rendered impossible, since at the climax of the final battle in canon, Midoriya gives up One For All in order to defeat Shigaraki, meaning he's left with the "embers" of One For All; All Might(who, admittedly, was weakened after his epic battle with All For One) lost his powers completely a few months after transferring them to Midoriya. Midoriya loses One For All completely by the time he graduates, and thus is unable to pass it on to Shikinori.
- Public Favor (MHA), which was published in April 2022, mentions in passing that Endeavor is still a hero after the Final War Arc, but is no longer as popular as he once was. Chapter 426, which was published in July 2024, has Endeavor retire due to losing an arm and ending up wheelchair-bound, something he was planning to do anyway but was forced on him due to the injuries.
- Naruto:
- The Sasuke/Sakura doujinshi Hide and Seek has Sakura's mother looking very much like an older version of Sakura. The non-canonical movie Road to Ninja later revealed Mebuki's design (and Sakura actually gets her pink hair from her dad).
- Shiruka yo is the oldest Naruto fic on FanFiction.Net, dating back to 2001 (predating even the anime). It depicts Itachi having tried to strangle Sasuke during the Uchiha massacre. Not only is this off because it was later shown that Itachi didn't lay a finger on Sasuke, but it's also completely out-of-character for Itachi.
- Team 8 started in 2006, so Itachi is intentionally written in the way he was first portrayed, as having killed his own clan merely for power (although Itachi's debut chapter in the fic came out after the manga chapter revealing the truth about him). This also might be a justified instance due to the Alternate Universe nature of the fic.
- The doujinshi After the War was made and relased six months before the manga ended, but it's set in the aftermath of the Fourth Shinobi World War:
- It's mainly a pairing fic that reveals that Sakura had gotten over Sasuke for quite a while and now loves Naruto, and it ends with them hooking up. In the manga Canon, Sakura's feelings for Sasuke never changed, and Naruto and she ended up paired up respectively with Hinata and Sasuke.
- It shows Tsunade still being the Hokage, when in canon she stepped down immediately after the war, passing the mantle to Kakashi.
- Naruto still has both arms intact; in the manga, he lost his right arm in his final duel with Sasuke.
- Daddy's Little Girl
from 2008 is an example, and it also depicts Sasuke's daughter being named "Mikoto" after his mother rather than "Sarada."
- One Piece:
- Coby's Choice: One of the more humorous outcomes in the Marineford War is Ivankov accidently using his powers to turn Admiral Kizaru into a woman, with the effects still present after the two year time-skip. Years later, the Egghead Island Arc in the manga would show Law being able to revert a similar transformation (this one caused by Doc Q of the Blackbeard Pirates) by using intense haki, which is likely that Kizaru would be able to do.
- Marie D. Suesse and the Mystery New Pirate Age!, while mostly faithful to canon at the time of its writing, was written before Trafalgar Law's character was explored in the Punk Hazard and Dressrosa arcs, so the writer mainly worked off of his relatively limited screentime in the Sabaody and Marineford arcs. As such, in the fic, Law's goal is to become Pirate King instead of getting revenge on Doflamingo for murdering Corazon, Doflamingo's brother and the person who saved Law's life.
- Return to the Reverie attempted to give the Five Elders, who at the time of the writing were a bunch of unnamed Non Action Big Bads, a case of Adaptational Badass by having them be expert warriors with potent Haki and Devil Fruit powers as well as giving them names. Eventually they were given official names and decided to get their hands dirty, where it's shown that they're far more powerful than the comic shows them to be, with at least one of them possessing Conqueror's Haki.
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica:
- Resonance Days:
- One of the main characters is the newly-incarnated form of the witch Charlotte as a Cute Monster Girl, whose original human form was never revealed (humanizations of her were very common in the fandom). This became outdated when The Rebellion Story introduced a canon human form Charlotte. Nagisa Momoe, who doesn't match up in the slightest with the version in Resonance Days: the character is described as a tall, pink-haired girl who's somewhat older than Mami, while Nagisa is a short, white-haired Token Mini-Moe, and that's before you get into their personalities.
- The character of Reibey, an Incubator with a very distinct personality and design from Kyubey, was made when the spinoff Puella Magi Kazumi Magica was still ongoing, which featured a character named Juubey, shown to be quite different from Kyubey. This led to it being widely assumed in the fandom that there were lots of other Incubators running around, possibly being assigned to different cities or worlds. However, it was revealed very late in the manga's run that Juubey was not a normal Incubator, but rather an artificial being created by a magical girl from one of Kyubey's corpses, and Kyubey implicitly suggests that other Incubators having their own personalities is basically unheard-of. Other spinoffs have affirmed this, as even a story taking place in medieval France featured Kyubey, suggesting that his species operates on a Hive Mind.
- Kirika's witch is named Margot, which was the common theory at the time, as the words "MARGOT GARDEN" appear in her barrier in the manga (the words apparently being an allusion to a Mary Cassatt painting, which the witch resembles). Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story revealed it was actually Latria.
- Stars Above: As noted in the very last chapter, creators BHS and AshenDream knew that The Rebellion Story, being already in the works, would outdate this. However, there were other things that they could not anticipate:
- The forms that the Demons took, based on the Nine Circles of Hell, were inspired from what their kind was called in Japanese (translated from "Majuu"). The original anime had yet to be dubbed when this story began, and when it was, they were dubbed Wraithes, a specific type of demon. And even in Japan, it still took a while longer after the fic was completed before Wraith Arc would get published to detail how they'd actually operate.
- With Kazumi Magica still ongoing at the time, Kazumi herself was declared dead in order not to conflict with any plans still in place for that. As it turned out, she was actually a clone of someone named Michiru Kazusa, created using a Witch's heart along with Michiru's body, dictating that she would still assume the name Michiru in the story's past timeline.
- Cheesecake
was meant to deal with the girls' experiences in the Wraith-verse, two years before the Wraith Arc would be published in Japan and even longer before its chapters would be summarized on Puella Magi Wiki. It was reasonable then to assume that Nagisa would play a role in things, but in fact, she never appears canonically. (Then again, it was her Witch form, who even apologizes upon bearing her true form for deceiving her friends the whole time, that Mami introduced to the others in Homura's reality during The Rebellion Story, and she probably wouldn't have had to if their real selves already knew her.)
- A History of Magic's first chapter details what likely happened to Joan of Arc as a Puella Magi. Whatever the story uses is no longer true with the release of Puella Magi Tart Magica, which reveals what actually happened to her.
- Resonance Days:
- Saki:
- While the version of Teru in Saki: After Story clearly suffers from Ron the Death Eater (not only refusing to admit that Saki is her sister, but beating up Saki after losing to her), it was written long before Chapter 128. In that chapter, which takes place just before the finals, Teru admits to Awai that Saki is her sister, and subsequent chapters imply that while the Miyanaga sisters still aren't on speaking terms, Teru doesn't hate Saki. In fact, Teru's character in the fic largely seems to be based off of her brief appearances in the first anime, which, in turn, was also aired when little was known about Teru.
- In The Saint Is Coming,
which was written in late 2012 (around the time the Side B semifinals were beginning), Rinkai gets humiliated in the finals, ending with only 10,000 points,Explanation resulting in their coach being fired. Considering that Rinkai consistently held first place for almost the entire Side B semifinals, and as of this writing, is in first place in the finals as of the start of the captain match, with 147,000 points after Awai's first winThe others(unlike in the fic, in which they had a paltry 23,000 points), it's unlikely that they'll end up being humiliated so badly.
- Necessary to Win has Hisa come to Oarai in part because of her parents' divorce. In Chapter 241 of canon, it is revealed that Hisa has two moms, that she left the tournament where she'd competed against Mihoko because one of her mothers had been in an accident, and that the accident led to Hisa's mothers divorcing.
- Tiger & Bunny: In Objective, the last-resort of the heroes to stop a Brainwashed and Crazy Kotetsu is to have Kaede copy Bellisair's power and give a new Objective for Kotetsu, which hits a snag when Sumo Thunder throws a car at Kotetsu and Kaede, leading to Kotetsu to grab and rescue her, unintentionally making Kaede copy his power and forcing her to head back and copy Bellisair again before she could free her father from the brainwashing. Season 2 would reveal that Kaede can only copy a NEXT power once.
- Superman: Virtually any pre-2004 fanfiction featuring the original Supergirl (like Hellsister Trilogy, Kara of Rokyn, The Golden Boy's Last Temptation, Tales of the Otherverse...) were alternate universe fics which presented the canon mainstream universe as a reality where Kara Zor-El did never and could never exist, assuming that DC would never bring the character back. The Supergirl from Krypton (2004) reintroduced Kara into the modern DCU, rendering completely unnecessary the use of parallel realities as an excuse for featuring the Superman's cousin.
- In an unusual official version of this, an issue of What If...? covered the idea of someone other than Wolverine becoming Weapon X, with the main change being that this Wolverine lacks his signature claws. The canon storyline Fatal Attractions would subsequently reveal that Wolverine had always possessed claws even prior to becoming Weapon X, which might make the strip’s version come off as an Adaptational Wimp or a case of Forgot About His Powers to newer readers.
- Adventures of a Line Hopper:
- The big reveal of Paradox (2012) is that, when the Doctor destroyed the Time Lords and the Daleks using the Moment, expecting to die along with them, he made a dying wish, hoping that someone will protect his friends, creating a timeline where Buffy/Elizabeth is not his companion but a Slayer without realizing it. Then "The Day of the Doctor" was released the next year and reveal that the Doctor doesn't actually get to use the Moment, resulting in Summaries Season 5 and Beyond later changing when and how exactly the Doctor makes the wish. When Paradox is rewritten as Annoying and Obstructive years later, the details of the reveal is changed accordingly.
- Since it was released before "The Name of the Doctor", Your Nature marks the Eighth Doctor rather than the War Doctor as the one who ends the Time War and acts like there is no Doctor incarnation between the Eighth and the "Ninth".
- Dante's Night at Freddy's and its first sequel were both completed before Five Nights at Freddy's 3 released. As such, Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza had very different backstory, different founders, and a different purpose (namely that the children sacrificed were part of demonic rituals) than the canonical Freddy’s games took.
- Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail (Infinity Train, Pokémon the Series) has Professor Cerise oblivious to his daughter's dislike for Pokémon and how he focuses more on his research and on Ash and Goh. This was written before Episode 31 revealed that he actually was aware of his daughter's insecurities and encouraged her to try something new. In fact, Chloe would eventually begin a character arc about learning to love Pokémon her own way, to the point where Professor Cerise thinks she isn't focusing as much on him any more.
- A Lamb In Hell (Hellaverse and Cult of the Lamb) has a few instances of this on the Hazbin Hotel side of the crossover when the show's first season released after several major story beats in the fanfic, ranging from depicting angels as not being immune to Hell weaponry, to using the fake backstory of Vaggie previously being a human from El Salvador, to Michael and Lambert describing the very act of redeeming Sinners as just another day at the office rather than something Heaven views as just as much an impossibility as those in Hell.
- Lord of the Castle (Castlevania (2017), Justice Leaguenote ): Because this story was published at the release of Season 2, it became outdated in many ways following Seasons 3 and 4;
- Alucard elects to sink Castlevania to the bottom of the ocean until Aquaman and his son are sent there by Orm (as per The Enemy Below), and him saving them is what introduces him to the Justice League. In the actual series, Alucard keeps Castlevania where it was teleported by Sypha, above the Belmont Hold.
- Carmilla and the Styrian Council are all alive and united, whereas in Season 4, Carmilla and Lenore are both dead, and Striga and Morana abandon her.
- One of the biggest, however, involves Death in his alignment, fate, and characterization.
- In the fanfic, his characterization is based on his game counterpart, where he is Dracula's loyal right-hand man. While he does pledge his services to Alucard upon Dracula's death, his loyalty to the dhampyr's father is ultimately stronger. When Alucard is turned 100% human by Mr. Mxyzptlk, some of Dracula's servants (including the aforementioned Cornell and Shaft) escape from Hell with Death using Loophole Abuse to keep them on Earth instead of sending them back, and works alongside them in an attempt to revive Dracula. Death currently remains at large and very much alive. Personality-wise, he keeps the polite, soft-spoken demeanor of his game counterpart, and even has fond memories of working alongside Dracula in raising a young Alucard.
- Compared to that, Death in the animation is the Greater-Scope Villain, and an Omnicidal Maniac who feeds on death itself. While he does want to revive Dracula, it's not out of any kind of loyalty or admiration; he does so with the intent of deliberately botching Dracula's resurrection to drive him insane and kill all life on Earth so he will never go hungry again. He is also killed by Trevor Belmont in the penultimate episode of the series. Finally, in contrast to the fanfic making Death a polite, soft-spoken antagonist, the last season has Death being Sophisticated as Hell, either talking in an upper-class voice or swearing like a sailor with a good amount of F-bombs and looks down on pretty much everybody else like gum stuck to his non-existent shoe.
- Marinette's Island Adventure (Miraculous Ladybug, Total Drama): TheComet666 has admitted to having stopped watching the show before Season 5 due to growing tired of the Love Dodecahedron, leaving them unaware of the various reveals
in that season like Adrien being a Sentimonster. This is most obvious in how Lila's homelife is treated here, as it follows how she initially came across as just being a lying bully with an enabling mother, only changing after Marinette starts revealing the truth on international television and her father starts being authoritative with her. Contrast that with canon revealing her entire identity of "Lila Rossi" being just one of many cover identities that she uses, and discards after Marinette and Sabrina expose her, "Lila" simply taking on a new identity as Cerise Bianca and going on to become the new Big Bad after taking the Butterfly Miraculous following Gabriel's death.
- Paradoxus (Winx Club, World of Warcraft): It has been in the works well before the seventh season of Winx Club was even rumored and before the "Shadowlands" expansion of World of Warcraft was released. As a result, there are quite the things Paradoxus doesn't include from its canonical sources.
- On the Winx Club side:
- None of the fairy (and witch) transformations above the Bloomix exist in this fanon continuity. Partially in an attempt of preserving the coherence (the Dragon's Flame is the magic that created the universe, therefore it's ludicrous to think the transformation it spawns isn't the most powerful) since the sixth season also introduced the Mythix. Instead, the next transformation in Paradoxus is called Etherix and is the result of training the Bloomix to its peak, a feat that often takes years to achieve.
- The fairy animals and the time-traveling Memory Stones from season seven are not a thing. This leaves the characters of Paradoxus with only one magical way of getting to the past: asking the bronze dragonflights, which is not an option. That's why Trisha and Tecna invent scientific time travel.
- Icy's retconned backstory about having a sister and being the Last of Her Kind is not included. Instead, she's the older sister of Darcy and Stormy and her reason for pursuing the Dragon's Flame is first to honor her ancestors and then for vengeance against Bloom.
- Valtor's return in season eighth. Here he was Killed Off for Real as the third season hinted. He hasn't and will never come back to pester the Winx's daughters.
- On the World of Warcraft side:
- The Realm of Death introduced in the "Shadowlands" expansion doesn't exist in this fanfic. Thus, no Eternal Ones, no Elune's sister, no Maw, and definitely no First Ones.
- Zoval, the Jailer, is not the entity behind all of Azeroth's misfortunes. Instead, the Burning Legion's invasion, the creation of the Scourge, and the Cataclysm are all the consequences of the characters' free will and ambitions. The Jailer did make a deal with Sylvanas Windrunner, but that's it.
- For that matter, Arthas Menethil is not a Jerkass with a Heart of Gold and, while still the Unwitting Pawn (at the beginning) of the Lich King, his corruption was due to Character Development and not because he was mind-controlled. His actions after fusing with Ner'zhul were very much his own. No one forced him to burn the Sun Well or to ravage his own kingdom.
- On the Winx Club side:
- SPBRR Fusion
by Nan The Keyblade Master has the Fullmetal Alchemist characters leaving the Galactic Federation in disgust over their corruption with Promised Day being about Samus and her team fighting back against the corruption and Super RWBY 3D Land
has Samus revealing a Neo Galactic Federation was created to protect the galaxy.. A month after Fusion was released, It turns out that the Federation in the game was a rogue faction in the Galactic Federation's military and the main Federation itself still holds Samus in high regard
, which Metroid Dread confirmed. Likewise, the ending depicts an X Parasite evolving into a new SA-X and heading to ZDR, only for Metroid Dread to reveal that the brief glimpse of the SA-X in the trailer is all there is of it in the game, appearing as a recap of Metroid Fusion. Likewise, RWBY and the Seven Sirens
states that Cuphead happened first, followed by The Cuphead Show!. The ending of the series finale of The Cuphead Show has it be the other way around.
- Cars: This fan art
of a car-ified Jeff Gordon was posted on a notable Cars Internet forum before the second film was released. When Cars 2 came out, however, Jeff Gordon guest-starred in it as Jeff Gorvette, and his character was portrayed as a 2009 Chevrolet Corvette
◊ rather than the 2009 Dupont Chevy Impala the fan art depicted him as.
- Despicable Me: In Despicable vs. Devoted, it was discovered in the final chapter that Scarlet Overkill, the Big Bad of Minions, passed away. This is not shown to be the case in Despicable Me 4, where she is shown to be alive and well, albeit obviously aged up.
- Frozen:
- Café Liégeois depicts Anna as a Lethal Chef, riffing off her Cute Clumsy Girl personality. Frozen: Breaking Boundaries shows that Anna can at least bake.
- The Royal Reunion named Agnarr and Iduna "Gaspar" and "Malin". At the time, their names were simply fan-speculation until later tie-in material confirmed them.
- The Queen of Hearts uses "Jonas" and "Matilda" for Agnarr and Iduna, as well as "Thomas" and "Primrose" for Fredric and Arianna of Tangled (whose names were revealed in Tangled: The Series).
- The Alphabet Story revolves around Elsa's Secret Relationship with a woman and the gayngst caused by Deliberate Values Dissonance. Later semi-canonical books show that Arendelle is accepting of LGBTQ people and that same-gender marriage is legal. It also goes against the ending to Frozen II by depicting Elsa, not Anna, as the queen of Arendelle five years post-Frozen.
- Shrek: Shrek Goes Fourth
, then intended to be a sequel to Shrek the Third, originally named the ogre babies (who had No Name Given at the time) Alex, Luke and Emmie. After Shrek Forever After officially canonized their names as Fergus, Farkle and Felicia, the author would rewrite the fic a few years later to (among other changes) give the babies their canonical names.
- Turning Red: The Panda Chronicles, published in 2022, set Tae Young as the fifth member of 4*Town. The 2023 tie-in manga 4★Town 4★Real confirms that it was actually Aaron T.
- Those Zootopia fanfics that portray reptiles as non-sapient Lesser Animals became this after the announcement of the sequel which reveals that reptiles are sapient just like mammals.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe: In Born of the Same Impulse, Steven and Tony use the Time Stone to send themselves back in time to defeat Thanos. They end up around the time period after Steven's accident, and in this timeline Steven doesn't go to train under the Ancient One, but tries to practice sorcery on his own. Later, the Ancient One confronts Steven, asking how he knew her magic when she doesn't even know who he is. Her dialogue here would be contradicted by Avengers: Endgame, where it is revealed that she's already been keeping tabs about him since 2012, as he would be the "best of [them] all".
- Sonic the Hedgehog (Film Series): The Uprising in Azerbaijanistan
takes place before the first movie, and Dr. Robotnik is aware of Project Shadow and the government's role in the death of his grandfather. Come Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024), and it turns out Robotnik was aware of neither Project Shadow nor the fact that Gerald was his grandfather, and that's not talking about how the film's promotional campaign revealed that Gerald was still alive in this continuity.
- The Beginning After the End: Most
fan
depictions
of Sylvie's human form were generally consistent based on how she was described - white-gold hairnote with her dragon form hornsnote , Supernatural Gold Eyes, and a black dress. What absolutely none of the fan artists got right were her ears, for when her official design
was revealed six years after her human form's debut, it depicted her with Pointy Ears not unlike her adoptive mother Tessia.
- In a pretty silly and general example of this, The Epic of Gilgamesh mentions an encounter with the giant Humbaba, but as chunks of the poem are lost, historians weren't very clear on the exact details. In 2015, fragmentary remains of a version of the poem were discovered, which filled out Humbaba's personality in greater detail—establishing him as more of a Good Is Not Nice Nature Spirit who is beloved by all beings of the forest, with Gilgamesh being treated as morally ambiguous at best in choosing to fight and kill him. This means that many depictions of Humbaba in fiction that depicted him as nothing more than a violent monster (for instance, Pathfinder's Humbaba) are outdated.
- Harry Potter:
- Before Order of the Phoenix came out, almost everyone (particularly in the US) assumed that Ginny Weasley's given name was Virginia (for a notable example, see The Very Secret Diary). Rowling announced in an interview that Ginny's name is actually Ginevra, and this was later written into the final book, but many volumes of Virginia fanfic still lurk in the old corners of the fandom.
- Similarly, it was widely assumed (one example among many can be found here
) that Teddy Lupin's name was short for Theodore, particularly by American fans (presumably because of the precedent set by Theodore Roosevelt), before Rowling stated that his name (and his grandfather's) was Edward.
- The first book mentions a "Blaise Zabini" in Slytherin, with no other information. The character became a popular O.C. Stand-in, usually as a Token Good Teammate. Also, since it's a Gender-Blender Name, American fans tended to create girl Blaises (usually with fiery red hair, owing to an Original Cast Precedent of sorts from her appearance as such in the popular Draco Trilogy) while Europeans had boys (often romantic Italians, given his Italian-sounding surname). Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince finally included a canon Blaise, who is male, black and a Fantastic Racist like the other Slytherins. A selection of stories with Zabini written before his characterization was fleshed out appear here
, but here is an extract from one of these, His Secret, which doesn't mix with his canon appearance.
''He had dark curly hair that he got from his father's side of the family but had been sorted into Slytherin because his mother's side has been there for generations.
- The long gap between the release of the ninth and tenth Haruhi Suzumiya light novels naturally encouraged this, particularly since the ninth novel ended on a Cliffhanger:
- For the first nine light novels, the only time anyone's parents are ever mentioned is Kyon making an offhand reference to his mother, who never appears herself. In addition, the long gap between the release of the ninth and tenth novels inspired quite a volume of fanfiction, one of which is Meet The Suzumiyas, in which Kyon winds up living with Haruhi, and has to deal with her parents: her father, Oruki, is an overprotective dad with a Hair-Trigger Temper, and her mother, Naru, is a Cloudcuckoolander and Supreme Chef — essentially, Haruhi's character traits are split between her parents instead of the reverse. This fanfic was quite popular and other authors came to use this interpretation of Haruhi's parents and even their names, and it might have ended there were it not for Haruhi's briefly mentioning her mother in the tenth book. From her description, she is a career woman who can't cook, meaning that Naru, at least, is totally inaccurate.
- More significantly, novel nine has a scene in which Kyon receives a phone call from a girl he doesn't know, but she calls him "senpai" and talks as though she knows him, before hanging up in frustration. The fanfic Kyon: Big Damn Hero wasted no time in giving her a name (Michikyuu Kanae) and making her a slider with a Dark and Troubled Past who joins the SOS Brigade and interacts normally with the other characters. When book ten was actually released, it turned out that the girl is named Watahashi Yasumi and isn't a slider at all, or even a person. She is nothing more than a creation of Haruhi's subconscious.
- One NUMB3RS fanfic, Who Am I?
, had Don and Charlie's mother named Rose, as her name wasn't revealed as Margaret until the second season.
- Stranger Things:
- There are several fanfics such as the Stranger Things: Rebuilding
series and the The Life You Deserve Universe that depict Will Byers as being just as interested in girls as the other members of The Party and gaining a female love interest, most often pairing him with minor character Jennifer Hayes. Most of these fics were written before Season 4 would confirm that Will was gay and had romantic feelings for Mike.
- In a similar vein, when Robin Buckley was announced as a character Steve would be partnered with for Season 3, many assumed she would be a love interest, with fics such as One Scoop Workplace Romance, Two Scoops Supernatural Occurrences
writing them as a couple.
- armed with stories you will leave
states that Lucas is Mike's oldest friend since early childhood, with the two meeting Dustin and Will later on, Season 2 reveals that Will was actually the first one Mike befriended in kindergarten.
- Joyce Byers maiden name was usually said to have been Horowitz in fanfics such as It'll Be Fine
. The canon stage play The first shadow would later confirm her maiden name was Maldonado.
- There are several fanfics such as the Stranger Things: Rebuilding
- Assassin's Creed: "The Hidden One"
, a one-shot short story about the life of Amunet, was written in 2011, six years before Origins was released. Just like her canonical counterpart, Amunet was a "Hidden One" and she was responsible for the death of Cleopatra; however, the circumstances for how she became an Assassin were completely different in Origins and its sequel comic. She was not her sister, Arsinoe IV, but instead she was a woman named Aya of Alexandria, who was married to Bayek of Siwa; they had a son named Khemu, who would be later killed by the proto-Templar Order of the Ancients. Also, she gave the queen a vial of poison to kill her. Additionally, Amunet and her husband are never called "Assassins" but instead "Hidden Ones" in-universe.
- The Dark Souls mod Dark Souls: Daughters of Ash claims in its story that Gwyn never actually linked the Fire, but instead sacrificed his daughter Gwynevere to it. Dark Souls III contradicts this plot element both implicitly and explicitly. Implicitly, numerous item descriptions throughout the game hint that Gwynevere was alive long after the first game, and in fact became the queen of Lothric. Explicitly, the final boss, the Soul of Cinder, is said to be the embodiment of every person who ever linked the Fire, and it uses Gwyn's fighting style in its second phase, outright confirming that he sacrificed himself.
- Doom: Remnant Inferis: DOOM posited that the Doom Slayer was the son of the original Doomguy. The canonical Doom Eternal establishes that they're the same person.
- Fire Emblem: Three Houses: The Savior King, the Master Tactician and the Queen of Liberation gives names to Counts Hevring (Fredrick) and Varley (Maximus) and the Agarthan impersonating Cornelia (Diado). These would be dated when the characters were named Waldemar, Grégoire, and Cleobulus respectively in Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes.
- Five Nights at Freddy's
- Mx Bones' now infamous interpretation of the Purple Guy as a young man with a ponytail named "Vincent" was for a long time treated as the representation of the character. This reached a controversial point where many fans were accused of romanticizing a character that was meant to be a child killer. Then came Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location which established the Purple Guy as a much older British man named William Afton who was a father of multiple children. "Vincent" has consequently faded into obscurity since then.
- The webcomic Springaling began around the time the third and fourth games were released, resulting in the author having to make up information about the identities of several characters that had more details revealed about them in later installments.
- Springtrap's human self in this comic is essentially BOB from Twin Peaks, down to sharing his name, and he wore a Fredbear suit to lure kids. Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location gives his name as William Afton, while Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator confirms that he used a golden Bonnie suit.
- The Crying Child lacks any connection to the murderer and is named Calvin. Sister Location reveals he's one of William Afton's sons and later supplementary material heavily implies his name is Evan.
- In life, the Puppet was a teenaged boy named Ian. Pizzeria Simulator reveals that the Puppet is possessed by a young girl named Charlie.
- Mario in Animatronic Horror came out a few months before the release of Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator, so the names chosen for the missing children are different than in canonnote , the way Henry dies is different from canonnote , and the person possessing Springtrap isn't William Afton but his son Michaelnote .
- In FNAFNG, the Marionette is possessed by the mother of one of the missing children, an idea popularized by the fan song, "It's Been So Long" by The Living Tombstone. The idea was soon outdated by the time Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator was released, when it was revealed that not only was the soul possessing it a child, but also the Cassette Man's daughter. By that point however, the AU had already diverged far enough from the game's canon.
- Friday Night Funkin': The Rapper GF
mod has Girlfriend portrayed as having a human skeleton similar to Boyfriend, since no one knew what Girlfriend's skeleton looked like at the time. However, this became inaccurate after the Week 7 update was released to Newgrounds, where Girlfriend is shown to have a clearly demonic-looking skeleton, complete with devil horns on her forehead.
- The Half-Life 1 mod Echoes occasionally Flash Forwards to the future of the series' chronology, and one of said Flash Forwards is the climax of Epistle 3, Marc Laidlaw's outline for the unmade Half-Life 2: Episode 3 where the G-Man abandons Gordon aboard the Borealis whilst "hiring" Alyx, leaving him to die on the ship on a crash course to the Combine homeworld. While the mod could probably still neatly fit into canon due to its Elsewhere Fic nature, Half-Life: Alyx would provide a canonical version of Alyx's hiring, but long before the characters get to the Borealis.
- Halo
- "The Law of Sin and Death"
, written two years before the release of the first game, is one of many examples of this in halo.bungie.org's fic archives. For one, Master Chief is nowhere to be found (his role is taken up by an OC); the Pillar of Autumn had civilians on board and is on the Halo for the long haul as far as anyone knows, and the Covenant seems to consist solely of Elites. Most notably, Cortana (or "the Sword") is depicted as a mysterious AI residing in Installation 04's systems who first appears to the main character as a seraph, and engages in frequent Biblical-flavoured back-and-forth with him. Towards the end, Cortana attempts to mentally merge with him, and is none too happy to be rejected. Cortana in the final game is...not like this.
- "Before the Storm"
(2001) posits that Master Chief is not only a battleroid (a type of combat cyborg from Marathon), but possibly one of the battleroids responsible for the fall of the UESC, which was succeeded by "SolCore" (what the UNSC was called in early pre-release material). And whereas in canon, everyone's glad to have Master Chief around, this crew is wary of even having his stasis pod on board and dreads the day he must be "reactivated".
Kaplansky looked at Bertram's expressionless face, and back to the mirror-like mask of the cyborg. Contained behind that mask was all the destructive knowledge of mankind. Everything they had fought so hard to forget.
- "The Law of Sin and Death"
- Hyrule Warriors: Heroes Through Time: For a given degree of "canon" considering the main game is officially non-canon, anyway. The story's initial chapters were published between the main game's PAL and US releases, and thus DLC events like Linkle's Tale and the Wind Waker post-game chapter are not included. As a result, Tetra and Toon Link do not appear, nor does Phantom Ganon, who was draining a Not Quite Dead Cia, who had simply disappeared and was presumed dead after her Last Stand.
- KanColle: For Halo crossover fic For Earth And Her Colonies:
- The fic had a number of (at the time) original shipgirls that were introduced into Kantai Collection proper after the fic was completed. The canon personalities of Saratoga and Warspite wound up being very different from the Saratoga and Warspite depicted in the story.
- In a more general sense, the fic depicted American aircraft carriers using black-powder muskets of the American Revolution or Civil War eras to launch their aircraft. The American carriers introduced into Kantai Collection proper have all used interwar or World War II-era weapons to launch their planes, namely the M1928 Thompson submachine gun (Saratoga) and the M1903 Springfield rifle (Hornet).
- Kingdom Hearts: A popular Sora/Riku artist has several doujinshi where Riku is a Long-Haired Pretty Boy, since he has long hair after joining Sora in Kingdom Hearts II. This was before his Important Haircut in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance].
- Metal Gear: The Last Days of FOXHOUND, a webcomic focusing on the Quirky Miniboss Squad from Metal Gear Solid, started a year before Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and was finished less than two weeks before Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots came out; in the words of the author, Guns Of The Patriots came out just in time to contradict most of his ideas. A few examples include Big Boss being a ghost since his death in Zanzibar, him handling Liquid's education himself and his "sons" being born in 1977. Canonically, Big Boss survived Zanzibar but was imprisoned by the Patriots, he wanted nothing to do with his "sons" and his clones were born in 1972. To the author's credit, people being unable to say the name of The Patriots due to a nanomachine mental block and Liquid's tenuous grasp on genetics are canonical.
- Metroid:
- Due to the original Metroid II: Return of Samus being monochrome, fans disagreed prior to its Video Game Remake Metroid: Samus Returns as to whether the "dangerous liquid" keeping Samus from progressing until all the Metroids in the area are dead is magma or some type of poison/acid. The Fan Remake Another Metroid 2 Remake went with the former, but Samus Returns depicts the liquid as toxic and purple.
- Written between Super Metroid and Metroid Prime, the Dark Fic Rise from Darkness depicts a very dark, emotionless version of Samus who works as a Professional Killer. Future canon depicts her as stoic but clearly heroic, and her "Bounty Hunting" is more mercenary work than contract-killing.
- Mother: A popular fan-theory to further tie EarthBound Beginnings and EarthBound together was that Buzz-Buzz is actually a time-traveling Ninten using astral projection to place his mind in the body of a bug in Ness' time, as elaborated upon in this online essay
. When the official novelizations of EarthBound Beginnings and EarthBound were released, however, they depicted the two games as taking place in the same multiverse rather than the same world, and Buzz-Buzz was given an expanded backstory as the last surviving member of a race of Insectoid Aliens whose planet Giygas would wipe out in a Bad Future, who had fought to resist Giygas then before traveling through time and space to Ness' world in order to stop Giygas in the past so his planet would be saved.
- Poppy Playtime: The web series Poppy Playtime Logic has an episode titled "HUGGY WUGGY'S SAD ORIGIN STORY..." in which Huggy Wuggy is referred to as Expierment-1006. Chapter 2 of the game revealed that Experiment-1006 is actually a different character, an unseen Big Bad referred to as “the Prototype”, and Huggy's designation is Experiment-1170 instead.
- Pokémon:
- The A New World, A New Way verse, which was already suffering somewhat from this trope due to its sluggish update schedule, had its entire premise demolished by Pokémon Legends: Arceus; Not only does the reveal that "Mon" Arceus is an avatar of a much greater god make the idea that Arceus could ever be sealed away by mere humans utterly laughable, Arceus is shown to have no animosity whatsoever towards Poké Balls or Pokémon catching, and is in fact the one who sends this installment's protagonist on the quest to catch all Pokémon.
- The first issue of Sonichu was written during the third generation of the Pokémon games, meaning Rosechu ended up having the pointed tail of a male Raichu rather than the blunted one female Raichu have had in Gen 4 and onwards. This led to a joking Trans Audience Interpretation among the comic's detractors.
- The Story of Silver Ketchum was written between the releases of Red and Blue and Gold and Silver. This leads to elements such as pre-evolutions and evolutions that don't exist, "Pikablu" (Marill) being an Electric/Normal type, and moves that aren't canonical.
- Sylvia the Sylveon was written after Sylveon was revealed as a new Fairy Type Eevee evolution but before its evolution method was known, meaning the author had to invent a means for Sylvia to evolve into a Sylveon; she had some scientists use an (unnamed) item. It later emerged that Sylveon's canonical evolution method requires an Eevee to have its affection raised to a high level while knowing a Fairy Type move. The author acknowledges this in her notes at the end of the story.
- Shin Megami Tensei:
- Continuance, a Persona 4 fanfic, was first published in 2011, before Persona 4 Arena was released. As such, not only is the protagonist called Souji Seta, his name from the manga, but his visit to Inaba for Golden Week is relatively unremarkable, and he doesn't participate in the Midnight Tournament.
- In The AFR Universe, Futaba Sakura's orange hair is treated as natural and comes from her biological father. An official artbook was later released that reveals Futaba dyed her hair orange on a whim.
- In Persona 5 New Game Plus: Joker’s Second Chance, two instances occurred due to the story being published just several months before Strikers and Royal were released respectively:
- The story starts with a Downer Beginning where Joker's decision to return to his hometown for his third year of high school with Morgana, isn't as hopeful as the original game's ending implies it would be due to realistic issues regarding how Japan views former criminals, even if Ren was falsely accused, and the outcome led to the Velvet Room attendants interfering to get Joker to travel back in time to fix what Yaldabaoth had done wrong to him. A few months after the story was published, Strikers, which was set half a year after the true ending of Persona 5, instead implies that Joker and Morgana are actually doing well in Joker's hometown before reuniting with the Thieves for the summer, putting the story as a whole squarely in this very trope due to said premise being based on what the authors gathered regarding the original Persona 5 ending when placed in the light of realistic issues Joker's choice to return to his hometown had.
- The story has Ren only reach up to rank 8 with all of his Confidants (Based on the authors experience in their first run and noting how difficult it was to max out the confidants on a first playthrough without a guide or proper time management) which contributed to his isolation from everyone sans Morgana and the resulting Downer Beginning, while Strikers alludes that Joker canonically maxed the rank of his confidants in Strikers insteadExplanation.
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- An interesting case of the now-jossed fan theory coming from a Promoted Fanboy: Ian Flynn — a longtime Sonic fan who ended up the head writer of the Sonic comics (both at Archie and at IDW), came up with a theory that the Time Eater from Sonic Generations was what remains of Mephiles the Dark/Solaris from Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) following a Cosmic Retcon and the timeline resetting. When Flynn ended up becoming the lead writer of Shadow Generations, this element was not carried over (presumably due to it being a P.O.V. Sequel to Sonic Generations, with him being asked to not interfere too much with its preexisting story, including the lore of the Time Eater) — Mephiles does make a brief appearance, but he's not related to the Time Eater in the way Flynn previously suggested, nor is he a major player in the story.
- There's a Fine Line provides its own backstory for Chaos Emeralds, namely that they were created as containers for Liquid Chaos obtained from "the Fountain" located underground. Four years later, Sonic Frontiers would come out and reveal that Chaos Emeralds are extraterrestrial in origin, making their canon backstory incompatible with what this fic claims.
- Splatoon fanfic First Aid Kits and Deep Secrets. It was written prior to the sequel's release, and thus it's outdated on many accords. For example, Inklings know how to identify Octolings, which was something shared by many other fics at the times. In canon, over a century of the species not interacting means that most Inklings during the time period of the first two games saw their sister race as little more than vaguely "exotic" Inklings... at least, in Inkadia.note
- Stardew Valley:
- In the game's first release, the summit was a glitchy Dummied Out area for which a boulder blocked the pathway. The Game Mod, Stardew Valley Expanded, added a quest to clear the boulder and access it. Then, patch 1.5 made the summit accessible only when achieving 100% Completion, at which point an end credits cutscene would play upon entering it, so the mod changed it to make it so that you get a message telling you that "something is calling you to the summit." Then, Patch 1.6 of the original game added a cutscene in which Mr. Qi will punish the player if they access the summit before achieving 100% completion.
- In Fanon, Haley gets a lot of Adaptational Angst Upgrade because of her parents' absence, with the aforementioned Stardew Valley Expanded and "Events Expansion
" mods adding cutscene events in which she expresses sadness and frustration over it. And mods like "Haley Event Expansion
" go as far as showing it being outright traumatic for her. Patch 1.6 of the game added a new line of dialogue for her, in which she mentions that her parents told her and her sister, Emily, that they could join them on their trip anytime. Still, she declined, saying that "no one wants to spend their vacations with their parents." hinting that she's not as hung over their absence. The mod "Haley's Pregnancy
" attempts to reconcile this, showing that while Haley initially was not as hung over, over the years and with the Character Development she goes through in the canon game, she slowly grew to miss them.
- In the mod Ridgeside Village, during the Luau festival, Richard mentions that it's a very old tradition of the town, as "it was present before him and will continue after he's gone." The official prequel comic book Stardew Valley Before the Farmer revealed that the first Luau took place on the year before the Farmer arrived to the valley.
- In the mod "Clint Reforged
", after Clint's date with Emily by encouragement from the Farmer, Clint says that the date was nice but not what he was expecting which starts his Character Development in the mod's storyline. Version 1.6 of the base game added a couple of post-date dialogue lines for Clint and Emily, which show that the date actually didn't go well.
- Star Trek Online: Due mainly to real-world money problems, STO suffered "The Great Content Drought" from roughly 2011 to 2013, resulting in much fanfic of the game going in a very different direction from what ultimately happened after the Legacy of Romulus expansion. A big one was The War of the Masters, a sprawling Shared Universe that developed on the official forum, which (besides introducing a completely original Story Arc about a group of Federation colonies switching sides to the Klingons) posited a significantly more extensive Undine infiltration of the Federation than ultimately became game-canon. In particular, Fleet Admiral Jorel Quinn is a Mole in Charge in the Masterverse (based on a fairly popular fan theory at the time), whereas in the 2014 mission "Surface Tension" he's confirmed to be an ordinary Trill. It's his adjutant Commander E'genn who's the Undine. A Soft Reboot of the Masterverse began around 2018 to bring its storyline closer to the game canon, but petered out after a partial adaptation of the Victory Is Life storyline.
- WarioWare: In page 48 of the fan comic series Love is a Type of Medicine
by SailorCrystalSun, Young Cricket has a conversation on a phone with the kung fu girl from one of the two-player rhythm games in Rhythm Heaven Fever, who Cricket refers to as his sister Butterfly. In WarioWare: Move It!, the kung fu girl appears at the end of Young Cricket's stage, where it's revealed that her name is Cicada and that Cricket doesn't actually recognize her, which also makes the chances of them being related highly unlikely.
- In the Japanese Umamusume: Pretty Derby fanfic Ogon no Bokun X Eiein no Nibante = Hoshi no Koutei (Boku)
, the OC protagonist reincarnates into a fictional foal of Verxina
before ultimately reincarnating once again in to the Umamusume universe... With Verxina as hernote mother once again. Any chances of Verxina appearing as a parental figure to even her RL foals have been wiped out as of Season 3, specifically its 7th episode, of the anime as Verxina is properly introduced as an elder sister/fellow student to Cheval Grand.
- Angels with Scaly Wings: One of the police officers, Naomi, is mentioned a couple times in the game, but does not make an onscreen appearance. There is a mod for the game called "A Solitary Mind" where you can date Naomi. Here, she is blue, quadrupedal, and has wings and lots of fins. Come the prequel comic, Angels with Broken Hearts, and it is revealed that she is actually lavender, bipedal, wingless, and the only fin to be seen is at the base of her tail.
- The Katawa Shoujo fanfic From Shizune's Perspective, portrayed Shizune as a lesbian (or at least bisexual), while Misha was heterosexual with unrequited feelings for Misha — in canon, the opposite is true. Interestingly enough, while the fic's Shizune is more or less fine with it, canonical Misha is not, and is troubled by Hisao getting together with Shizune.
- RWBY:
- Belladonna Lilies: Adam, though cold and cynical, is far kinder than how he'd be revealed to be in Volume 3.
- momoxtoshiro has written several fanfics, including The Champion and the Singer and Camellias, that depict Weiss' father as far nicer and more loving than he is in canon.
- Fixing RWBY created its own backstory for Roman Torchwick tying him to Brunswick Farm and the Apathy and how he met Neo. This was before Rooster Teeth released RWBY: Roman Holiday, which is the origin story of both Roman and Neo's partnership.
- The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, a fic written and completed before Volume 2 came out, depicts Cinder as a Well-Intentioned Extremist rather than the self-serving power-hungry monster she is in canon.
- The 2014 oneshot Ivory Bones revolves around Weiss' abusive home life. It depicts her father as more hands-on abusive, while in canon Jacques' abuse is primarily emotional (while Jacques does smack her at one point, Weiss is genuinely shocked, indicating this hasn't happened before). Weiss also lacks her older sister Winter or her younger brother Whitley. On a more subtle note, it's implied that Blake has a Dark and Troubled Past involving her parents. In canon, Blake's parents are just fine, and her issues mainly start after she ran off to join the White Fang.
- The Makings of Team CRME: Up to about Chapter 9 of Volume 6, there was nothing in these stories that would contradict the show. Once that came out, cracks started to form when Emerald explicitly stated she didn't have anyone who loved her. In An Emerald Unearthed, she knew her father and mother before going onto the streets. Also in that chapter, it revealed that Mercury's Semblance was stolen by his father. While nothing else in The Black Hearts is contradictory, the fact that this is never mentioned would be odd considering the importance of such an event. There is also the fact that Volume 7 revealed that Watts was presumed dead by Atlas, meaning he couldn't work in a hospital during CRME. Once Volume 8 finally gave Cinder's backstory, it was completely different from the one described in My Name Is Cinder.
- A Monster's Marriage: A few months after this fanfic ended, the episode The Lady in the Shoe premiered, revealing that Adam's mask hid a horribly burned SDC brand on his left eye, contradicting Adam's appearance here, where he only wore the mask for cool effect.
- In My Huntsman Academia, the author said that Salem would be an Eldritch Abomination whose visage has driven men to madness (specifically mentioning Tyrian Callows) and that the Grimm are her eyes and ears. That she is something from beyond time and space, something incomprehensible. This was outdated by Volume 6 of canonical RWBY, which reveals her backstory to be far different. The author has confirmed that it doesn't matter, though, as he's sticking with his interpretation for consistency's sake.
- React Watch Believe Yikes started alongside Volume 1, so lots of it clashed with the show would present, such as Ruby and Yang being orphans with Yang being adopted (their shared father is alive, and so is Yang's mother), or Ruby only having a pet rock (her dog enters the show at some point). And given it is the cast riffing on Red vs. Blue, takes a long while to make the girls realize main character Church has the same voice as their father.
- Recovery is a take on Volume 4 written that started a few days before the first episode. It contains various differences, such as a lack of Whitley in early chapters (due to the fact he wasn't referenced in the previous volumes) and Yang's prosthetic requiring surgery.
- Relic of the Future: The whole premise of the story deals with the canon story coming to a conclusion, only for one of the protagonists to go back in time because the ending was so bleak he wanted to try for a better one. As such there are a lot of assumptions made about how the show might continue after Volume 5, the latest season when the fic premiered, which proved pretty quickly to be off-base when Volume 6 started airing a few months later. Some of the new info is retconned into later chapters, but as the show continued further it became impossible to reconcile the setup of the fic as compatible with canon.
- A key feature of the Bad Future Jaune comes from is that all of the Kingdoms have been destroyed except for Atlas, which has been taken over by Jacques Schnee and the SDC; Jacques has gone so mad with power that he murdered Whitley for standing up to him and rules Atlas and Mantle with an iron fist. Volume 8 would then conclude with Jacques being murdered in a prison cell and Atlas and Mantle both being destroyed via Colony Drop. Some of the canon events surrounding this are vaguely mentioned, while the pieces that would contradict this are simply ignored.
- The fic is kicked off because Salem is afraid of dying and wants to send Jaune back in the hope that he screws up and she doesn't die that time. Volume 6 would then reveal that Salem's entire motivation in the show is that she wants to die, and she thinks the only way she can is to bring the Relics together to destroy Remnant. To accomodate this major change, the fic ignores her canon motivation and gives her a new one: rather than trying to destroy Remnant, she's only trying to destroy most of humanity to prevent the world's supply of magic from running out.
- The only reason Salem is able to die in the opening chapter is that Ozpin managed to combine the four Relics to create a weapon that can bypass her immortality. Volume 6 would then reveal that bringing the Relics together actually summons the Brother Gods to cast their final judgement on Remnant, which would inevitably end with the entire world being destroyed. As the fic approaches the climax, this dissonance gets addressed; Jaune reveals that there's a specific way to bring the Relics together without summoning the Gods, and he even thinks that this was how the Gods always intended for humanity to eventually kill Salem without them having to come back.
- Considering that Ironwood spent Volumes 7 and 8 in canon becoming a villainous threat as dangerous as Salem's forces by shooting Oscar point blank, executing dissidents, and eventually trying to destroy Mantle outright, it's more than a little odd that Jaune originally thinks he can trust Ironwood to be a calm leader and friend; conversely, Volume 8 featured both Emerald and Hazel switching sides after learning the truth about Salem (both of which Jaune witnessed firsthand), so it's odd that Jaune almost kills Emerald on the spot when he sees her again.
- In the first chapter, Salem claims that she was the god that gave Ozpin his reincarnation curse, which surprises Jaune. In Volume 6, the cast learns that the Brother Gods gave Salem immortality and Ozpin his reincarnation curse, so Jaune's had the correct information for years by this point.
- While the specific circumstances behind Summer Rose's death are still unknown, canon has made it clear that Salem was personally involved in her death, as Salem remembers her and specificially taunts Ruby and Yang over it; in the fic, she was just one of countless Huntsmen who were ambushed by Tyrian and Hazel on Lionheart's direction. There's also a recurring plot point that Summer doesn't understand why Raven didn't try to save her (since Summer never used her "one save"), but Volume 9 would ultimately reveal that however Summer died, Raven was with her at the time.
- In the episode "So That's How It Is", Ozpin openly admits that he doesn't have any kind of grand plan to try to defeat Salem and that he doesn't truly know where they should be going from here. This is a huge contrast to Jaune viewing him as a master manipulator who purposefully led Jaune's friends to their deaths just so he could finally pass to the afterlife.
- RWBY: Destiny of Remnant: Raven may be aloof and pragmatic to a fault, but she's still depicted in a more positive light than her canonical counterpart, who was revealed to be selfish and cowardly.
- Service with a Smile:
- Adam Taurus is an Adaptational Nice Guy, which was an intentional change, but it was done before Adam went completely psycho in Volume 6. The author admits he probably wouldn't have bothered making him nice if he had known. Adam is also able to take off his mask and blend in, while in canon he has a brand over his left eye.
- Adam tells Blake that no one in the White Fang really noticed when she disappeared; she wasn't particularly high-ranking, and those who remembered her just assumed she died on a mission. Canon soon revealed that not only was she a high-ranking member of Adam's White Fang, but she was the daughter of the original founder. Everyone noticed when she disappeared.
- Being a fic run mostly on comedy, Weiss Reacts naturally has this, especially with the Schnee family (Winter being more... mild-mannered than canonical, Papa Schnee being a nice father, and Grandpa Schnee being the villainous one when it's actually inverted in canon).
- White Noise (RWBYRemnants) was written before Volume 4 revealed that Weiss' father was abusive. Its version of Jacques is much kinder than in canon.
- White Sheep (RWBY) has Salem surprised that she's able to have children. However, Volume 6 would reveal that she did have kids thousands of years prior. The author would retroactively incorporate this into later chapters.
- The Writer Games: Winter hadn't yet appeared in canon when Chapter 12 was written, so it was unknown at the time that she was a member of Atlas' army and a powerful specialist, rather than the non-combatant civilian who appears in Chapter 12.
- SMG4: The fanfic Saiko Rocks has Saiko depicted as living in a two-story house in close proximity to a quicksand pit which plays a significant role in the story. "SMG4: She's Back!" would show her canonical living conditions as being an apartment.
- Adventure Time: For a large chunk of the show's original run, Marceline's mother was such a Missing Mom that the only in-series proof she ever existed was a single mention in the first season, leading to much speculation as to who she was and what happened to her. Several fanart interpretations, like jackie-lyn's "Marceline's Mommy
" and TiaBlackRaven's "AT Marceline's mum
", made her look like much like her daughter, with pale skin, long black hair, a taste for gothic fashion, and/or the same pointy ears, often making her some flavor of paranormal entity as well. When Marceline's mom finally did show up in Season 7's "Everything Stays" during the Stakes miniseries, she turned out to look nothing like these portrayals, with her being a normal human with brown skin, short hair, and a mundane outfit.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender:
- The fan-comic Alternate History (rufftoon) depicts the Fire Lord as a male-only position. Azula needs to produce a male heir but keeps having daughters. It was later revealed that the position of "Fire Lord" is unisex.
- In the final chapter of The Children of War
, Ursa discovers that she is secretly the descendant of Avatar Roku, and is warned to not let the Fire Nation Royal court know. In Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Search Ursa is fully aware of her heritage, as is the Fire Nation government, as it is the reason Ozai marries her.
- Beavis and Butt-Head: The fanfiction series Coming of Age, was written during a time long after the 90s run of the show ended, essentially functioning as a post-canon fanfic during a time when the show was considered as good as finished, but before the two revivals, particularly the 2022 revival which really changed the game in how Beavis and Butthead's life ended up. In this fan-written series, the duo graduate high school and go on a road trip with several supporting characters. And there's even an additional epilogue where Beavis and Butthead are shown at a high school reunion after many years where they harass McVicker again. But in the 2022 revival show, which additionally also overrides the 2011 revival along with this series, the two never even get to the point of graduation, travel through time, and end up in the 2020s where they find themselves in quite a different scenario living decades into the future.
- In an official case, a lot of stuff meant to cash in on the success of Batman: The Animated Series fell into this as time and DC Animated Universe went on:
- A lot of stuff, including the Superman & Batman Magazine and The Batman Adventures #25, usually would make the rest of the DC universe seem like it was like in the actual comics at the time, resulting in things like Superman sporting his post-resurrection mullet, Hal Jordan with white streaks in his hair, Kyle Rayner in his comic costume, Aquaman defaulting to the long hair/beard/hook look, the Hawkgod Hawkman, and early on, Lex Luthor with long hair and a beard. This was a practice that continued early on in Superman: The Animated Series and The New Batman Adventures only with the stuff tied with Superman and Batman looking like it did in the shows and the rest of the universe resembling the then-concurrent comics, but this practice eventually ended as the DCAU went on.
- Speaking of The Batman Adventures and its various form, not only did it feature an appear by Superman and Lex Luthor in their respective post-resurrection and "Lex Luthor II' forms, it also features appearances by Huntress featuring a version of her origin that closely resembled her comic counterpart's at the time (her family being massacred as a yong adult) and Catman being a Catwoman fanboy complete with dressing up like Selina. When they make their actual DCAU appearances, Huntress's origin was (somewhat) based on the retconned Cry for Blood origin (losing her family as a little girl) and Thomas Blake was reimagined at a cult leader who didn't use the "Catman" name.
- The Fairly OddParents!:
- The "Fairly Future Series" by KwazyKandyPie
, written in 2004, depicts Cosmo and Wanda as having a daughter named Venus. "Fairly Odd Baby" would later give them a son named Poof.
- The third and final entry in the series, Secrets, Secrets
, depicts Wanda as a princess with a mother, father and brother. Canon would later reveal that she has a father who runs the Fairyland garbage collection like it was the Mafia, as well as a twin sister, but no mother.
- The third and final entry in the series, Secrets, Secrets
- DeviantArt user Yorokobi-Chan (formelly supertoilet) made fanart on fanon children on some pairings, such as Venus and Cossima being the daughters of Cosmo and Wanda
(whether this was inspired by KwazyKandyPie, Yorokobi-Chan is KwazyKandyPie, or the whole thing is just a coincidence is unknown). "Fairly Odd Baby" later has the couple with their only son Poof.
- In the fanfiction Love, Marriage, and Ulterior Motives
, Timmy says that Da Rules forbid him for wishing up a child for Cosmo and Wanda, while Coming Full Circle
(by the same author) has Wanda explain that she and Cosmo never had children because she is unable to bear children. Come "Fairly Odd Baby", Timmy DOES wish up a child for Cosmo and Wanda without being forbidden to do so by Da Rules, and it's revealed that MALE fairies carry and give birth.
- Fairly Odd Fanon administrator ZArtist2017 created fanart on depictions of various characters aged up, such as Poof, Foop and A.J. But by the time The Fairly OddParents!: A New Wish aired, those characters have much different depictions on those characters.
- ZArtist2017's take on Poof
depicts him with a purple striped sweater, black pants and long purple hair. A New Wish
◊ instead has Poof with a mix hairstyle based on his parents, a purple collar long sleeve shirt with overalls and brown shoes. Not only that, but Poof now goes by "Peri".
- His Anti-Fairy counterpart Foop also has a different depiction. ZArtist2017
depicts him with normal head design, long black hair and mantain the same eyebrows as a baby. A New Wish
◊ instead has Foop has blue hair and sports a pompadour and new eyebrows, and of course his head is still a cube. And much like his fairy counterpart, Foop goes by the name "Irep".
- ZArtist2017
based A.J.s' design loosely on how he's depicted in the bad future of Channel Chasers
where he has a more angular head and smaller eyes, but A New Wish
has A.J.retaining his head design. Though unlike Poof and Foop, this is chalked up to Early Installment Character-Design Difference and the fact time travel is involved with the special.
- ZArtist2017's take on Poof
- Deviantart user toongrowner drew his take of a grown up version of Poof back in 2010
where he sports a curved hair style based on his father, a purple jacket paired with a purple shirt under and black pants, has a regular wand and wears Timmy Turner's hat with his fairy crown above it (the description says it's a goodbye gift from him after they parted ways). Like with ZArtist2017's take, this is outdated with Poof's new form in "A New Wish" as he doesn't sport any of this (including Timmy's hat and instead has a scepter wand).
- The "Fairly Future Series" by KwazyKandyPie
- Gravity Falls:
- For most of the show's run, there were multiple fanworks under the collective "The Mystery Trio
" banner, going off the theory that the Author of the Journals was Grunkle Stan's twin brother Stanley, and they alongside Fiddleford McGucket studied the various supernatural occurrences in Gravity Falls. While Stan's having a long-lost twin brother who was the Author turned out to be I Knew It!, as well as Fiddleford being an assistant to him, the Season 2 episode "A Tale of Two Stans" would reveal that Grunkle Stan wasn't part of the research team. Not only that, but Grunkle Stan wasn't Stanford, but Stanley; he faked his death and took on his brother's identity.
- The Return to Gravity Falls takes place three years after the end of the show. However, the author also began writing it a mere month after the show's second season began. He attempted to avert this trope by being deliberately vague about what might have happened after the events of Gideon Rises, but quite a few of the specifics he did have were jossed, such as Stan still being the owner of the Mystery Shack post-series and the aforementioned Mystery Trio theory. Any minor details that didn't greatly affect any of the fic's own plots would be rewritten as the fic went on, before the writer decided it wasn't worth the hassle and proclaimed that (for the most part) only the events up to "Not What He Seems" happened in this story's timeline.
- For most of the show's run, there were multiple fanworks under the collective "The Mystery Trio
- Hazbin Hotel: The four year gap between the Pilot and the show made this inevitable. A prominent example is the Youtuber Paranoid DJ, who produced songs from the point of view of various characters. Notably, he made both Lucifer and Pentious Card-Carrying Villains. The former is established in the very first scene as having sympathetic motivations, while the latter has a Heel–Face Turn in episode 2.
- The Infinity Train fanfic appropriately titled Infinity Train FANFIC was written based solely on the 2016 pilot and ended months before the series debuted, so this was bound to happen (though it also gets a surprising amount right):
- The train in this fic was created to literally travel outside the bounds of creation to explore infinity. Meanwhile, the show's train is revealed at the end of the first season to be an Epiphanic Prison that has improving the mental health and behavior of its passengers as its only goal.
- The fic depicts numbers as being grafted on any part of the body. In canon, the train always defaults to a passenger's hand, with Word of God stating it goes to the next available patch of skin if the person is an amputee.
- The Loud House:
- The fanfic What is a Person Worth? has Mr. Santiago (Bobby and Ronnie Anne's father) as a character. The fic began before episodes like "Shell Shock" and "The Loudest Mission: Relative Chaos" made it clear that he is no longer around in the show itself. In the final chapter, the author tried to correct this error by having the character die in a car crash, going with the assumption that he was dead in the show. And then this in turn became outdated when the spin-off confirmed that Mr. Santiago is in fact alive and well in the show, but just living and working in Peru, and divorced from their mother. The fic also gives his name as Marcus, when the show establishes it to be Arturo.
- The fic "The Loudest Mission: Relative Chaos" has the Santiago's still living in Royal Woods rather than move to another city like they did in the aforementioned episode.
- A similar situation can be found in Requiem for a Loud, in which Bobby and Ronnie Anne's mother has passed away two years before the story, and their father is now their sole parent. This part of the story was written before it became clear that in the show itself, Mrs. Santiago is alive and raising the two kids alone while her husband is away.
- The A Loud To Stay uses the popular fan theory of Lincoln being adopted. Over a year later, the episode "Not A Loud" aired and debunked this theory.
- In the fanfic Syngenesophobia, the author has stated in a note in chapter 39 that several aspects of this fic have not aged well with later official episodes of the show.
- The story shows Lincoln, Lynn, and Luan going to the same school (a K-8 school), when later seasons prove that they go to separate schools (elementary, middle and high school).
- Benny no longer speaks to Luan for her role in beating up Lincoln. In the actual show, Benny becomes Luan's boyfriend at the end of "Stage Plight".
- One of the girls' punishments is being forced to visit Aunt Ruth every weekend, but combined with Early-Installment Weirdness, the later episode "Ruthless People" shows Lana being the only one who enjoys visiting Ruth.
- The story claims Lucy was born with blonde hair. In canon, while she has been depicted as blonde before in "Back in Black," she's been later established as having had black hair at a younger age, and it's unknown what her natural hair color is.
- Lucy's Secret: The story states that none of Lucy's friends are in her class. It was written before the show revealed that her friend group actually is all in her class.
- Miraculous Ladybug:
- Bee-Nevolent was written and completed before the second season, and thus its take on the Bee Miraculous is quite different from canon. In the fic, the bee kwami is named Hanii, she has brown eyes and a motherly personality, and she gives the power to heal a single person/object; canon would later reveal that the bee kwami's name is Pollen, she has blue eyes and a more subservient personality, and she gives the power to paralyze a single person.
- Moving On: As the fanfic was written before their official debut on the show, the Dragon and Snake Miraculouses grant Playing with Fire and Mind-Control Music powers, respectively, rather than Elemental Shapeshifter and Save Scumming powers.
- Powers of Invisibility was written before season 2 aired, and said season ended up contradicting several things:
- Juleka in the fic is an only child who has incredibly neglectful parents who are content to leave their underage daughter alone while they live halfway across the world from her. "Captain Hardrock" revealed that Juleka actually has an incredibly loving (if anti-authoritarian) mother and an older brother.
- The Turtle Miraculous is given the power to restore someone who's been affected by an akuma's powers. Canon would later reveal that it actually grants Barrier Warrior abilities.
- A number of Salt Fics written in between Season 3 and the Season 5 finale (including Telling Lies? No, Mama and Karmic Backlash as examples) have Lila Rossi's mother, the current Italian Ambassador to Paris, as one of the characters, who does a significant amount of damage to Lila's house of cards (or says she could have after the fact) when she is told about Lila's excessive lying and bullying of Marinette. And then late Season 5 came and revealed that "Lila Rossi" is an Invented Individual, a fake identity of a Little Miss Con Artist who promptly ditches it the moment it is no longer convenient (and as of the season finale is using the name "Cerise Bianca"), who has swindled many women (including the aforementioned ambassador) into thinking she was their daughter so they would give her stuff — and as of Season 6 is the only Big Bad still standing. So canon just made clear "calling Lila's mom" probably would not have worked.
- The release of Octonauts: Above & Beyond, which features non-anthropomorphic deer and tigers, caused this trope to happen to the fanfic Junior Officers, which features anthropomorphic deernote and tigersnote .
- The OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes fanfic series
simply known as the Perfect AU was subject to this multiple times. Before said fanfic series gained its name, it referred to Perfect KO as Kaio, since his name had not yet been confirmed in the show and the author considered it to be a good compromise - the author later went back and corrected this. His portrayal is also slightly different from the show's in general. Later on, this came up again due to the show having not yet clarified the connection between Laserblast, Shadowy Figure and Professor Venomous; in the fic, Shadowy Figure is Laserblast's Superpowered Evil Side (and Laserblast lacked the energy-draining ability he has in canon; Shadowy is his non-laser "power") who pulled a Split-Personality Takeover when the donut shop exploded, and Laserblast did, in a sense, die in that explosion (since only Shadowy remains). Venomous, meanwhile, is an entirely separate person. In the show, Laserblast was physically unaffected by the explosion, and merely chose to become a villain around that time, Professor Venomous is Laserblast after his Face–Heel Turn, and Shadowy Figure is his alter ego he sometimes turns into, who eventually tries to permanently seize control of his body much later. Additionally, in the fic Carol actually more-or-less knows what happened to Laserblast.
- The Owl House: The inciting incident of Outsiders (The Owl House), which began publication during Season 1 of the show, is that Edric and Emira get disowned by their parents for being gay. However, the show's second season would make it clear that the Boiling Isles are a Non-Heteronormative Society, where such a thing wouldn't even be notable, much less lead to such drama. Meaning that while the fic sees everyone doing their best to hide the fact that Amity is a lesbian from her parents in order to avoid the same fate, in canon, their mother's only complaint is that Amity's girlfriend lacks a high social status, while their father gives his blessing.
- The Penguins of Madagascar : Skipper's Log
and the author's other POM fan fics were written before season one even finished airing, and the show as a whole lasted for three seasons, so several elements in the fic became invalidated by future episodes. Skipper's history in Denmark is explained but it does not involve Hans the puffin (who was introduced in season two), and he's established to be on the run from his old team after betraying them, while the show confirmed in season three that he was banned by the human inhabitants of Denmark, Dr. Blowhole commands a pod of dolphins and a flock of seabird minions instead of an army of lobsters, and is given an Uncertain Doom (while the show ends with him free to fight the penguins another day), and Skipper, Kowalski and Rico raised Private since he was dropped off in their habitat as a small chick, whiles various episodes (especially "Mr. Tux") later confirmed that Private joined Skipper's squad much later in life. More broadly speaking, this fic and most others based on the show took it for granted that it takes place after the second movie, but this has become a lot harder to rationalize without some serious Fan Wank after the release of Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted and the penguins' own cinematic movie.
- Samurai Jack: The webcomic Grim Tales from Down Below, a crossover series between many cartoons, had the original character Chi — the daughter of Aku. Born from him thanks to Voluntary Shapeshifting, she's a Cute Monster Girl with lesbian undertones (due to Author Appeal) that can be described as Aku as a cute girl, bringing the best out of him. In 2017, Samurai Jack returned for one more season, wherein Aku canonically gets a daughter in the form of Ashi: a Dark Action Girl born as a member of the Daughters of Aku, a team of assassins who served an Aku-worshiping cult and Jack's eventual Love Interest. While she is revealed to be Aku's literal daughter, she is not a Daddy's Little Villain, as he wasn't even aware she existed and both see each other as enemies. Also Aku didn't give birth to anyone.
- The She-Ra and the Princesses of Power fanfic Cat-Ra has its Lotus-Eater Machine chapters depict Beast Island as the origin of Catra and her kind, being an untamed wilderness that was later ravaged by the Horde, which was a popular fan theory prior to season four. While those chapters were written after that season released, the author had not yet watched it, meaning they weren't privy to the reveal that Beast Island is a man-made island made mostly of discarded alien technology and host to very little natural life.
- Star vs. the Forces of Evil: Much of Queens of Mewni had been created before Seasons 3 and 4 aired, and before The Magic Book of Spells was published, so the author decided to make it a full blown AU. Most notably, there are way more queens than canon, Crescenta became a Decomposite Character (her character design became Solena the Smitten and her name was attached to a new character), Comet is Moon's adoptive mother (biological aunt) and served as Moon's regent, and Star is a legitimate descendant of the Butterfly family instead of being from an impostor line.
- Steven Universe:
- Magna Clades: The fic was made during the middle of the show's first season. It features significant divergences from canon, like the Gems being from an alternate universe named Mineralis and having males of their kind.
- New Feelings: Much like Magna Clades above, the fanfic was written during the show's first season. It also features the Gems having males and females when they're a feminine-presenting One-Gender Race in canon.
- Crystal Gem Academy portrays "Pink Diamond" as simply being the title of Rose Quartz. Later events in the show's canon make it clear that it's the other way around, with "Rose Quartz" being an alias that Pink Diamond used.
- In That Which Surrounds
, there is no acknowledgement of Rose being Pink Diamond. More blatantly, when Steven dies, Rose reforms — a far cry from the canonical "SHE'S GONE!" scene, which confirmed that even when separated from Steven, his mother's gem is still his and only manifests a Hard Light version of Steven rather than her.
- The humorous fan blog Texts Between Gems encountered this in various ways; most notably, its initial depiction of Yellow Diamond turned out to be very different from her canonical counterpart... and since the blog was already essentially Crack Fic (and made many jokes involving gems referring to each other as being family members despite them technically not having relatives), it explained her blatantly out of character behavior away by revealing
that those texts were actually from her very non-canonical twin sister "Mellow Diamond."
- The Voltron: Legendary Defender fanfic series Voltron: Duality gave Pidge and Matt's mother the name Karen, before Word of God revealed that her name was Colleen.
- Winx Club: Almost Magical takes off after the sixth season, which means that the highest transformations the Winx earned are the Bloomix and Mythix (which one is more powerful depends on perspective) and that they never traveled to the past nor saw Valtor get reincarnated. All of these plot points are missing in the prologue's recap of events.

